26 February 2006

This Blog is doing my head in. It looks completely different in each Browser I use. Could you answer some questions? Mention which Browser/Platform you currently use. I know this is a pain but it's just really digging the anal retentive out of me...

1) Do the links pictures in the sidebar show up? Are they at the top or the bottom of the page?2)Is the Coil slurpy psychedelic pic around the blog title still showing?3) Can you see pics within each post? - above this should be a nasty pic of Tom Cruise and his ugly older sister Barbara.

25 February 2006

23 February 2006

This is pretty funny, if you like that kind of thing. "Take a twit like Slavoj Zizek, someone showed him one of my Necrocards, and he immediately leapt to the most ridiculous conclusions..." is going to be the opening line of my novel...

If you go down to the woods today then you can download the soundtrack to John Carpenter's The Thing aka Kurt Russel's crowning glory (Escape from New York blah). Although the soundtrack is Morricone scored, you can tell from the beats and phasing synths that John Carpenter smeared himself all over it to such an extent that this is essentially a collaborative affair. In fact, I seem to remember hearing somewhere that Carpenter ditched as lot of the original score because it didn't sound enough like his own work (which begs the question...), though I'm sure some of that is put back onto the CD... because parts sound less phased out than I remember... have to watch the film again tonight, just to make sure...

Anyway, the music alone makes it an ideal i-pod soundtrack for scouring the streets in early morning ice and fog, setting fire to vagrants and watching them scatter pretty patterns around the streets like fireflies (on nothing strongger than acute sleep deprivation the trailers can be magnificient) ... although it works just as well when you're sat at your computer composing poetry/hate mail to lost loves.

And if you haven't found seen the film then come over and we can watch it together though you'll have to excuse the bile and the buboes because the Loki family are giving up smoking and it's like my wife and I have just found ourselves abandoned on a desert island and have started snacking on fish that were already dead...

18 February 2006

You can dress me up diamonds - 1) expensive, but you can see where she's coming from.You can dress me up in dirt - 2)first indication of atavism/hermetic fundamentalismYou can throw me like a line-man - 3)well, kids don't do enough exercise these days...I like it better when it hurts - 4) mm,introjected anger/self-loathing possibly indicating depressive tendencies (have you read Sancher-Masoch? Not half as fruity as the cover...)

Oh, I have waited here for youI have waited - 5) first indication of a Buddhist like calm that's just out of her reach... You make me wanna la la - 6)neologisms as a sign of parietal disorder and/or schizophreniain the kitchen on the floor - 7)artful playing with Archetypes or Cinderella complex? The floor is a likely representation of the inital stages of deinidividuationI'll be a french maid - 8)nice to see young people interested in cleanlinessWhen I meet you at the door - 9)but this is a mistake in modern Urban livingI'm like an alley cat - 10)homeless? hairy? or is this a veiled reference to her singing voice - interesting to note the precise anatomy of the male cat's penis with reference to note 4Drink the milk up, I want more - 11) infantilism as a regressive ego defence?You make me wanna - 12) further sign of ego defence / paraprax?You make me wanna scream - 13) see note 11-12You can meet me on an aero-plane - 14) indication of aspirational tendencies / negation / sublimation of death drive or exhumation of it?Or in the back of the bus - 15) ego-balance maintained, reality principle engaged.You can throw me like a boomerang - 16) analysts consistently relate this to Ashlee's "lost backpacking youth" but this perhaps tells us more about their "lost backpacking youth"I'll come back and beat you up - 17) note the dualism here; allowing oneself to be discarded and yet returning with increased vigour and externalised aggression. Possibly referencing her recent Laingian therapeutic regime especially with regard to destructive double-bind language dualities and the inability to maintain consistency between verbal and non-verbal communication

Oh, I have waited here for youDont, keep me waiting - 18) This beatific state is but temporary. She's only slipped into the next room...You make me wanna la lain the kitchen on the floorI'll be a french maid When I meet you at the doorI'm like an alley catDrink the milk up, I want moreYou make me wanna

You make me wanna la lain the kitchen on the floorI'll be a french maid When I meet you at the doorI'm like an alley catDrink the milk up, I want moreYou make me wannaYou make me wanna scream

I feel safe with you - 19) patient-analyst transference beginning; analyst is reminded that he is old enough to be her father; analyst is in temporary period of self-doubtI can be myself tonight - 20) i.e. Maslow's self actualisation or perhaps a Godhead fascinationIt's alright, with you - 21) the use of the postive/dismissive 'alright' is interesting here, suggesting an unconscious dissatisfaction / orgasmic dysfunctionCuz you hold, my secrets tight - 22) self explanatoryYou do, You do - 23) the repetions here could perhaps be ignored except for the echolalic descent that occurs at the end of the song...

You make me wanna la lain the kitchen on the floorI'll be a french maid When I meet you at the doorI'm like an alley catDrink the milk up, I want moreYou make me wannaYou make me wanna la lain the kitchen on the floorI'll be a french maid When I meet you at the doorI'm like an alley catDrink the milk up, I want moreYou make me wannaYou make me wanna scream

17 February 2006

The Brits... strangled affair really, with echoes of 1995 dotted throughout and evidence of time travelling - Lemarr, Craig David!! (did they even release stuff this year?)... and how is Chris Evans invited back (you can only wonder at those that turned it down); last time he had any grip on the public imagination was during the 'egg on your face' game on Big Breakfast, where the accompanying tune sunk deep into my unconscious and helped me get to grip with revising Cognitive Neuroscience 1.

I made it to ten o'clock (the terrible spectre of The Weller To Come eventually forcing my hand), using the whole show as an extended Cilice but not really getting off on the self-loathing at all. I'd expected an ounce or two of smugbeans at least from watching idiots vote in the Grate and the Grey but the sight of the Kaiser Chiefs made me physically sick after a while, forcing me to wolf down Ginger Nuts and cover myself from head to toe in anti-inflammatory cream.

This was no fun at all. I'd expected something like the Top Of The Pops chart rundown - crap, crap, good video, reeealy crap, okay, good, crap, crap.... - fun for all the family, a little bit of gently cathartic hating to ease me towards a spectacularly dull meeting I had planned for Friday morning but wave after wave of odd, sensory deprived grey sludge was being shed here and I was beginning to worry for my children.

Kelly Clarkson couldn't make it and got replaced by an Edwardian street urchin having a fullsome Karaoke crack at her punky rock, bouncing around just enough to evade the cameras full gaze before disappearing into a backstage envelope to shine shoes and sell BOGOF blowjobs to the assorted losers.

Occasionally The Arcade Fire appeared on screen, I can't remember why.

Kanye West tried to add ironic bling but came dressed as an unfortunate pirate with sunglasses that would only have looked good on Lux Interior (i.e. someone who genuinely didn't want to see the world too clearly) and got consistently trumped by Mr Rose Tyler who squealed about the flesh on show every spare minute, thus reducing the 'shock' of the parade to the kind of disappointment only ever experienced by cheapo Porn fans who click on the Free Web Cam ads and don't pay up...Jo Wylie appeared looking even more a lost Hawklord than ever. The guy from Flaming Lips appeared to give an award. I can't remember why and, by now, neither can he.

Prince turned up. Noodled. Sent Joss Stone and KT Tunstall into labile squeals. Noodled some more. Left. My 14 year old son came in and asked: "Who is he?" "It's a long story", I told him. "Not a good one, I expect," he said, shuffling out of the room.

Madonna has been inspired by Elvis Costello and Radiohead. Oh. She looked mildly furious at being overlooked for Best British Act, though I expect the bucketloads of Bifidium Digestivum and Omega 3 is eventually taking it's toll: her ass is winning the protein war but her brain is vaulting vital amino acids all over the dancefloor.Everything was overwhelmingly nice, except Craig David who looked pissed off, perhaps because his category - Urban - was won by Ruud Van Nistleroy in 'Mamie' mode. On second thoughts maybe he was pissed off because he'd been here since 2003, trapped in a bewildering rush of music that's passed him by. Using Ms Dynamite as a marker proved to be a mistake because she's trapped here too in a Ballardian Urban Squall which brings to mind the head-flicking daydream I had the other day whilst at a College Function about being trapped forever in an endless Conference Centre...

16 February 2006

"The slime mould is an amoeba which lives on bacteria found among the decaying leaves in forests. It mutiplies by simple cell division every few hours. This leads to recurrent population explosions accompanied by shortage of food. When threatened by famine, the amoeba "commence the enactment of an incredible series of activities. These activities are a literal metaphor for the organization of cells in a multi-celled individual, or the organisation of individuals into a social unit.

The amoeba stop behaving as individuals and aggregate into groups, which form clumps, discernible to the naked eye. These clumps then form straggling streamers of living matter, which ... orient themselves towards central collection points.... At the hub of each central aggregation point, a mound begins to form as groups of amoeba mount themselves atop other groups....

This hub gradually rises first into the shape of a blunt peg, and then into a distinctly phallic erection. When all the incoming streams of amoeba are almost completely incorporated into this erected cartridge-like form, it topples over onto its side, now looking like a slimy sausage. This slug begins now to migrate across the forest floor to a point where, hopefully, more favourable ecological conditions will prevail. Estimations about the size of the population ... vary, but generally it is thought that perhaps some half a million amoeba are involved....

After migrating for a varible period of time (which can be two minutes or two weeks) in the direction of light and warmth, this slug gradually erects itself once again into its phallic shape until it is standing on its tail.... This oval shape gradually assumes the form of a candle flame, bellied at the bottom and coming to a point at the top.... The end result is a delicate tapering shaft capped by a spherical mass of spores. When the spores are dispersed ... each can split open to liberate a tiny new amoeba."

"The cattle tick is a small, flat-bodied, blood-sucking insect with a curious life history. It emerges from the egg not yet fully developed, lacking a pair of legs and sexual organs...The metabolism of the insect is sluggish to the point of being suspended entirely. The sperm she received in the act of mating remains bundled into capsules where it, too, waits in suspension until mammalian blood reaches the stomach of the tick, at which time the capsules break, the sperm ae released and they fertilize the eggs which have been reposing in the ovary, also waiting in a kind of time suspension. The signal...is the scent of butyric acid, a substance present in the sweat of all mammals. This is the only experience that will trigger time into existence for the tick...

The tick represents...a kind of apotheosis of subjective time perception. For a period as long as eighteen years nothing happens. The period passes as a single moment..."

Last night, half-term holidays here, me and my little munties (8 and 5 - Jedi / Doctor Who and Butterfly / Rose Tyler respectively) played zombie movies in the graveyard by the light of the full moon. For children, there's something instinctively attractive about torches flicking into the night sky. The darker it gets the more they like it and I'm convinced it's not because darkness = mystery but because darkness means the torch beams slide out more effectively.

05 February 2006

Jodie and I wander the multiverse. She is my muse, I her ghostwriter - appropriate given yesterday's conversation about the Ghostbox record label and, more specifically, the Derrida-derived term 'hauntology' which has been pinned upon this music in various corners of the blogosphere.....

But surely, reflected Jodie as she delicately shifted her weight on the sunbed, Derrida would require us, nay compel us, to read the text against itself and unearth the textual subconscious of the debate? For example, let us fixate, in true deconstructionist style, upon a single term as representative of fractures and discontinuities in the argument - specifically why does Loki feel compelled to 'anthropomorphisise' the music? Why does music, the most intrinsically human of activities, need 'rehumanising', unless we see through this chink in the surface of the discourse a latent awareness that the entire enterprise is, at heart, a dead one? Does not the very term 'hauntology' chime so readily with this insight? Not alive, once alive, now dead, or undead - an atavistic, regressive picking over of the bones of the past. The symbolic resurrection of long-mourned inner children with myriad repeated references to seventies telly and the school music room. The zombification of visceral human experience, ossified beneath ontology, mummified and mortified.....

Well, says I , fetching a bottle of Tango Tan from the cupboard, there's a lot of nostalgia out there on the internet these days Jode.....

Too true, but it's never the good bits though is it? said Jode, as she adjusted her little blue goggles. Where's the funky futurism of the Joe 90 theme? The demented disco of Monkey? The lyrical majesty of Ulysses 31? Why, beneath all that theory, does it all sound like the theme from bloody Fingerbobs? Uuugh.... earnest beardy guys making elaborate hand movements I can do without....

Remind me never to take you to a Circle gig Jode, I said, passing her a towel. But maybe you should head over to dissensus and antithesise their thesis?

Not likely, said Jode, reaching for her robe, I'm auditioning for the Blakes Seven relaunch this afternoon, only so many hours in the day, I'm only human you know.....

02 February 2006

Talking guitars not so much in the vein of Jimi more like Die Haut, travelling to hitherto unknown directions, and for something conceived in the 90’s it still sounds as sharp as a razor – cutting down my pre-conceptions of Russian music. Every song’s charged with tension, unexpected turns and a ‘cool as’ attitude. It doesn’t matter that you can’t understand a word and probably just as well as in the case of Sigur Ros, that characteristic deep vocal is enough for me… this is solid gold - and I’m having trouble coming to terms with the fact – it’s free…

Well, I got curious and had a handbasin full of PayPal cash from Ebay record selling so decided to take the plunge into Ghostbox, as recommended by the likes of Blissblogger and K-punk...

Yeah, even as I was doing it I felt the creeping melancholy that comes from knowing that where you used to buy records because your friends had them (or because they didn't!) now we've got...this. It's noticeable that the above 2 bloggers have already done away with comments boxes; perhaps those reminders, however faint, of a previous, instantly reactive, way of music discussion - albeit one devoid of the facial tics and gestures and unconscious tells - were too much to bear...

Anyway, they were right. These releases have something about them.

I'm not a fan of the hauntology term that's been used - appropriating from Derrida is like stealing from Gilbert and George - but the way that the music of especially The Focus Group and The Advisory Circle breaks up into tiny bitesizes somehow evokes the idea that each piece is being forced to survive on its own. No idea why but it's music that forces anthropomorphism; you can imagine the individual tracks desperately wanting to coagulate into a whole but being resisted because they don't quite fit in. The Focus Group albums, in particular remind me, spiritually, of the way in which Nurse With Wound's A Sucked Orange fails to fit together or maybe the almost coherence of Coil'sMusic For Commercials.

Not quite fitting in seems a relevant theme here, one present in all the releases. The Advisory Circle sort of re-imagines Children's Educational TV in the same way that Look Around You does (I haven't seen the second series). That series always worked best when it was restrained, when it got near to an exact copy of the originals, when it didn't stray too far from a whistful re-imagining rather than a descent into piss-taking and nosethumbing... i.e. I liked episode 1, the rest was patchy at best.It's music that attempts to occupy space between knowledge shots, music that attempts to imagine what cells and particle accelerators and gearboxes and osmosis might sound like from the perspective of 1972. The music looks to the stars with the belief that they are only decades away. Music that might have evolved in the shreds of light between the colours of the TestCard.

I can remember a friend putting their head against a black and white TV screen and yelling: I'm thinking in binary!

It's music that soundtracks those moments in a child's life. It's music that actually does what Boards of Canada are attempting to do (okay, maybe occasionally they get it right...) and the Ghostbox boys(and girls? doesn't sound like it) manage this in a far more subtle way. Where Boards of Canada force you into a mystical route through their titles, covers etc, even when the music suggests otherwise, The Focus Group let you get there on your own by hinting at the odd glamour of the 70s schoolroom and re-suggesting the idea that it could be a place of real alchemy and hope and wonder...

The mystic grounded. Space used as a beacon rather than an investment.

It's music that Lustmord said he was making but never did. Always thought he wasted that name.

Eric Zann and Belbury Poly work more conventional structures (Eric Zann is a new drone king ) but they're mapping the same accents and angles: the perhaps illusory idea(l) of quintessential Britain, one happily corrupted by foreign influence (several tracks from Belbury Poly can't help but make me imagine the Moomins) and assimilated into a kind of grubby and languid (and often accidental) occulture which allows wooly jumpers and radio-kits and brick-dust and swinging hand-painted pub signs (The Slaughtered Ass, The Golden Calf, The Hump-A-Back...) into the mix alongside the American 50s Sci-Fi gleam and Scandinavian Philosphy.

Children of the Stones, Sapphire and Steel, Dr Who, (that show about a Russian place where they made lots of poison gas...), Teach Yourself Chess TV. Take your pic.

It's music that seems to believe there was a time of innocence and expectation, a place pre-spin where the threat of Nuclear War and the Utter End Of It All made everything other seem much closer.

01 February 2006

One of my favourite Bardo Pond covers that, which brings me to the fact that those original guitar fuzz monsters have got some excellent live action for you to download over at the Internet Archive’s Live Music Archive - Several complete shows in fact spanning the band’s entire history...